Posted on 11/23/2013 4:45:32 AM PST by markomalley
A Common Core school district – Gulfport, Mississippi – is covering up failing test scores.
At a recent meeting by Superintendent Glen East, parents were told that the test scores of the district had improved dramatically under the implementation of the Common Core curriculum. The Superintendent made his claims regarding dramatic academic improvement of all students by using ONLY the scores of the top 150 students.
In his comments to parents, Mr. East stated,
“This district already had national average ACT scores. We’ve now gone with our top students, our top 150 students, we’ve gone from a 23 average to almost a 25 in over four years. That is not a new ACT, that is the ACT we are currently working with. We’ve improved reading achievement for all students. When I look at that data about how we’ve grown over the past four years and the success we’ve had, if you are in my shoes, you have to celebrate what you are doing. Very Powerful!”
However, a couple of weeks later at a subsequent event, it seems that parents had a chance to research the data that the Superintendent had reported. Upon closer inspection of the data, parents found that the Superintendent completely misrepresented the data, and that the results were worse, not better. They were not simply a little worse, but a lot worse.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan should take note. This father does not look much like a white suburban mother. Chris Ashley is the pastor at a local Baptist Church who has a son attending the Gulfport schools. He opens his talk with congratulating the district on the gains they had made. After a brief applause from the audience, he goes into the data.
“According to the Mississippi Department of Education website and their stats, and I can leave them here with Mr. East or all you all can go and get them yourself, everywhere else we are dropping. From 2009 to 2012, almost every grade has dropped in their scores. Not all of them, but overall our test scores have dropped.
“…Greatschools.org you can go there, they’ve pretty much done all the math for you, they tell you the percentages of students that have scored proficient or better. Third grade language arts, we’ve dropped 4%, this is all 2009-2012. Math 3rd grade we’ve dropped 6%. Fourth grade language arts, we’ve went up 8% but we dropped 5% in math. Fifth grade we dropped 5% in language arts and 6% in math. Sixth grade we went up 1% in language arts, we dropped 2% in math. Seventh grade and eighth grade, went up 8 and 4, and eighth grade went up 4 and 12.
“The 5th grade MST test we did well at we up we went up 9 and 17 points.”
Well, that is good, right? But what about on the very SAT and ACT that the school district touts?
“The SATP from 2009-2012 in Algebra we dropped 34%. In 2009-2012 in English we dropped 18%, in Biology we dropped 46% in those same years, and in history we dropped 38%. You see I heard a lot about our ACT scores and how great they are from the 10th grade and that is awesome. I didn’t check the 10th grade scores, but I did check the graduating seniors…. From 2007-20011 we’ve dropped 1% in English, 0.7% in math, we are level in reading, we’ve dropped a half a percent in science and a half a percent in composite scores.
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“Now, we all know we can take data and we can twist to show what you want it to show. I took the numbers straight from there and said I didn’t give you just the 10th grade or just the 7th and 8th grade where it looks good. I gave it all to you.”
Then this parent details what the No Child Left Behind testing shows, that Gulfport schools appear to be falling behind.
“I have our district report card here from the No Child Left Behind, and we have dropped. We have dropped without a doubt. Every grade 3-8th in mean score scale, everyone one has dropped. The 3rd-8th grade in language arts, and math, and science, the mean scale score, we have dropped from the previous year, every grade. We have dropped in algebra in the high school, we’ve dropped, uh, we’ve dropped in the mean score in every except biology we stayed even 648.
“Like I said, I have all kind of common core curriculum questions, but what I don’t like is somebody to screw the numbers and tell us we are doing good when we are really not doing good.”
What was the answer to this parent from Dr. Carla Evers, Director of Instructional Programs?
“I looked at the Greatschools website, it will show the Gulfport schools going up, and then all of a sudden we just dive like we went off a cliff and stopped teaching. Well, we did. We stopped teaching the state standards and we shifted to the common core standards state standards. So that should have happened because the things that are on that test were not what we were now teaching in our classrooms. So we understood that, the state department put that in our newspaper, but for some reason they still put those test scores on their state website.”
Now, what material would it been that is no longer taught in the Gulfport schools? Reading? Addition? Subtraction? Multiplication? These are huge score drops. Further, the ACT was the same test that Superintendent East had just bragged about, so how is it that it can be used to brag about improvement for one grade, but not erosions in learning in another grade?
Even worse, the school district is upset that the State Department of Education failed to hide the scores from the state website? This is outrageous!
If the ACT and SATP are not valid measures of student learning in Gulfport, MS, then what measure is? Do the colleges in Mississippi no longer accept the ACT and the SAT?
Activists at Stop Common Core Mississippi Facebook page noted,
“Common Core clearly fails to teach the foundational material needed to pass tests. Whose fault is it that the failures was leaked to the public?”
There are lies, damnable lies and statistics.
Common core final math exam:
If suzie has 2 candy bars and johnny has 3 candy bars, what
Does this tell you about the world? Show your work
A) conservatives are bad
B) conservatives are evil
C) conservatives are stupid
Leftist answer:
D) All of the above.
1) Getting rid of sub-literate teachers (education majors have the lowest SAT scores of any college major, which means they're attracting the people who can't make it anywhere else).
2) Once again separating the disruptive students from the ones who want to learn.
3) Sorting students into different classrooms by ability, so the slow ones can get extra help, while not holding back the pace of the smart ones.
4) And do this without regard to the screams of the race pimps, if the above results in "disparate impact" to minority teachers and students.
Obama bio read by fourth-graders suggests whites are racist, details president’s past drug use
By Maxim Lott
Published November 22, 2013
FoxNews.com
obamabook.JPG
Parents and critics say a biography of President Obama being studied by children as young as fourth grade includes topics they don’t need to read about.
A biography of President Obama being studied by at least one fourth-grade class has received criticism for glossing over negative aspects of the president, painting white voters as likely racists and highlighting the commander-in-chief’s early identity struggles by focusing on his teenage drug use.
The book, “Barack Obama,” was published by Lerner Publishing in 2010 as part of their series “History Maker Bios.” All presidents going back to Richard Nixon — except George W. Bush — were the subjects of similar biographies published by Lerner, which did not respond to questions from FoxNews.com.
Critics also say the new Obama book is biased, pointing to a passage that reads, “but some people said Americans weren’t ready for that much change. Sure Barack was a nice fellow, they said. But white voters would never vote for a black president.”
“As he got older, he started smoking and drinking. Was that what it meant to be black?”
- “Barack Obama,” a biography read by fourth-graders
Kyle Olson, founder of the conservative Education Action Group Foundation and EAGnews.org, said that is a problem.
“I have no problem with kids learning about Barack Obama ... he’s the President of the United States,” said Olson. “However, the book teaches fourth graders that white voters didn’t want to vote for black men.”
If you like your test results you can keep them.
Yes, right up until the drugs wear off, then that plummets too.
I am currently tutoring my 7th grade grandson in Common Core Pre-Algebra. Here’s what I know:
1. It’s not about just algebra. It is a mix of arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry and geometry. All mixed up with no obvious sequence that I can detect.
2. The teachers hate it. The contribution of the teacher to the learning process is certainly diminished.
3. The students are confused. Problems range from silly simple to complex and difficult. Half way through the first year there has been very little actual algebra coursework. Some topics are just pounded into the ground. Some are a day or two and on to the next subject. Rhyme and Reason seem to have taken a back seat.
4. Obama must love it. Test scores will decline. Students achievement in life will decline. The Know-Nothing Dem Count will increase.
I can tell this is fake. Common Core would never use American names like Suzie and Johnny.
I guess it will soon be time to trot out their solution to this: fundamentally transform the assessment so it judges how well the propaganda is regurgitated.
In my recent journeys, "sub-literate teachers" are not the problem. Standards for certification are higher than they've ever been. People who can't find jobs in other professions have transitioned to teaching. Teachers are deluged with requirements for enrichment and recertification.
The problem is these trendy curriculums, teaching things when the kids are too young and don't fully grasp the concepts, and to much excuse-making for the thugs in training.
A good place to start: Stop saying it's the parent's fault. Make the kids responsible for their bad behavior and lack of achievement in the classroom.
Not having children, I’m not overly familiar with Common Core, but I find it interesting that while it is despised here at FR, it also is heavily criticized at Democratic Underground!
Common Core is almost universally hated.
Do you really want the feds telling you how to educate children?
Hey, if even DU has no use for it, you have to know that it's in trouble.
The more I learn about it, the more people need to seriously consider homeschooling to avoid it like the plague.
Cream rises. Those who are literate and can think for themselves will eventually rise to the positions of influence and power.
It's just another reason to homeschool.
Homeschoolers, this is what you're missing out on.
“U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan should take note.”
The man who ran the Chicago Public Schools? That Arne Duncan? Duncan couldn’t take notes if you gave him a stenographer.
——Cream rises. Those who are literate and can think for themselves will eventually rise to the positions of influence and power.-——
That is true in the private sector...
But in public sector, those things are meaningless.... Ideology is the test of granting or gaining influence and power....
I don't know a lot about CC but from what I've read I suspected what you said is true. The entire curriculum comes from the Feds and the teachers are/will be nothing more than "facilitators".
Cream rises. Those who are literate and can think for themselves will eventually rise to the positions of influence and power.
_____________________
Only in an objective society. Those who are literate today will be accused of being privileged or of trying to act as though they were. Thinking for oneself is not appreciated. In some respects, it never has been and my experiences go back to 1948.
The nail that sticks up will be pounded down and positions of influence and power will be allocated according to whatever the PTB decide is in their own best interests.
However, the literate who think for themselves and who have the ability to create may still be able to find a niche in which they can excel past any societal barriers. It will not be easy. Once they arrive at some degree of success, they will also have to contend with the jealous conformists, whose power is derived from the consensus.
I admire competent homeschoolers. I observe that such parents are today targets of the totalitarians and I believe that is why they are usually very careful to demand only excellence from the children. Still, the system will go to lengths to make life difficult for the non-conforming. Perhaps it is overcoming or, at least, surviving this system that is the real achievement.
This is not meant to start an argument. I believe one must be as objective as possible in an authoritarian environment and not allow enthusiasm to cloud ones conclusions. It is horrible to have to choose between educating your child to their fullest potential and beyond or to face the bureaucratic wrath of the herd.
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